Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Miscommunication in action in the opening scene . . .David Henry Hwang has long chronicled thecomplications of Asian and western cultures clashing with mostly deleteriouseffects. His p…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:14PMThursday, November 3, 2011
Her sisters and her nurse minister to AgnesIt’s been 30+ years since I’ve seen theBergman movie on which Ivo van Hove’s Toneelgroep Amsterdam production isbased, but in any case, this …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:17PMMonday, October 31, 2011
Karl Miller and Aubrey Dollar in CompletenessSeeing thesetwo plays back to back made me think a lot about content and style in realistdramas. Both Itamar Moses’s Completeness and Ric…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:05PMWednesday, October 19, 2011
Dangling in front of a balcony at the Foxwoods TheatreAfter all the press brouhaha about Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark for thesemany years, and the vituperative reviews from most of the mains…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:04PMMonday, October 17, 2011
Sarah Kazemy and Nikohl Boosheri in a fantasy sequence in Maryam Keshavarz's CircumstanceWriter/director Maryam Keshavarz’sbeautiful, disturbing film tells the story of two Iranian hi…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:08PMFriday, September 23, 2011
Martha Plimpton, Rob Lowe, and Sofia Vergara crown Melissa McCarthy at the Emmys[Note to readers: My mother, Cyma Dolan, died on August 19th,which I share only to explain the radi…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:54PMSaturday, August 20, 2011
In May, I participated in the Feminist Performance Festival in Chicago, organized by E. Patrick Johnson and their Northwestern colleagues in performance studies and women's studies. (S…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:00PMThursday, August 18, 2011
I had the pleasure of also receiving last week a lifetime achievement award from the Women and Theatre Program (WTP) of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). My membe…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:35PMTuesday, August 16, 2011
I was honored to receive the 2011 Outstanding Teacher in Higher Education award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) last week at the conference in Chicago. How …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:02PMMonday, July 18, 2011
Called to my attention by its writer/producer, Anna Fishbeyn, Sex in Mommyville has been transformed from a solo show that opened in 2010 at the Flea Theatre in NYC to a multi-character play…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:06AMSunday, July 17, 2011
I really enjoyed the final installment in the Harry Potter film series. I read the book when it was first released, and remember feeling very moved by how J.K. Rowling wrapped up her e…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:13AMSaturday, July 16, 2011
The Galway Arts Festival opened last Monday, July 11, promising an impressive range of Irish and global theatre and performance opportunities through July 24. My own consumption of the…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:36AMThursday, July 7, 2011
Úna McKevitt conceived and directed the companion pieces Victor & Gord and 565+, which were performed together at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, Ireland, last weekend. Seeing th…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:17AMTuesday, June 28, 2011
In the category of shameless self-promotion, let me call your attention to two forthcoming titles, one by my partner, Stacy Wolf (or "Feminist Spectator 2") and the other a collection of per…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:44AMMonday, June 27, 2011
I’ve been living and teaching in Galway, Ireland, since the beginning of June, working with my co-teacher Stacy Wolf, 15 Princeton students, and five local students in a Princeton Global S…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:54AMSunday, June 12, 2011
I recently had the good fortune to have an op-ed piece on the dearth of women playwrights nominated for Tonys this year picked up by the Huffington Post. (Thanks to all of you who saw …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 10:06AMSaturday, May 28, 2011
I saw The Shaggs Philosophy of the World at Playwrights Horizons on Wednesday (May 25, 2011), in its second preview performance. Based on a true story, The Shaggs describes how Do…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:29AMFriday, May 27, 2011
For the last nearly six years (since August 2005), I’ve mostly used the occasion of this blog to indulge in long-form essays about theatre, film, performance, television, and anything else…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:04PMSaturday, May 21, 2011
On Friday, May 20, 2011, I moderated a panel discussion on feminist performance at Northwestern University's "Feminist Performance Festival," organized by E. Patrick Johnson, Ramon Rivera-Se…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:15AMTuesday, May 17, 2011
Seeing the Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s landmark AIDS play, The Normal Heart, prompted me to think again about activist theatre and how it might effectively communicate its conscious…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:59PMSunday, May 15, 2011
The Tony Awards season confirms what anyone concerned about the status of women in the arts has long come to expect: plays by women are excluded from the nominations once again. When will …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:07AMMonday, April 25, 2011
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People offers a compelling, if liberal, view of race, class, and gender relations in contemporary Boston. The Broadway produc…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:53PMSaturday, April 9, 2011
This very smart play presents a conundrum of ideas and feelings which, happily, it refuses to sort out in any complete or resolved way. Part of playwright Madeleine George's point is to sug…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:43AMTuesday, March 29, 2011
Bathsheba Doran’s lovely new play is a meditation on community and the unlikely ways in which it forms and dissolves across time. With a light touch and moving, smart insights, Doran pain…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:53AMSaturday, March 19, 2011
Caryl Churchill’s 1983 play, Fen, represents the British feminist playwright at her best, even though the play is rarely produced. In this revival at London’s Finborough Theatre, direct…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:24PMThursday, March 17, 2011
When I heard that Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss would star in a revival of Lillian Hellman’s classic realist play The Children’s Hour in London this spring, my first thought was, �…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 01:58PMMonday, February 28, 2011
Every year, I settle in to watch the Academy Awards show, and every year, I come away disappointed. Last night’s show promised something a little different—young co-hosts Anne Hathaway …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:37PMFriday, February 18, 2011
Austin Pendleton directs Paul Schmidt’s translation of Chekhov’s play with verve and surprising wit, giving the play a hint of contemporary relevance while maintaining a light touch over…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:07AMSunday, February 13, 2011
I missed the Public’s production of Merchant in the Park last summer, and so was happy for an unexpected chance to see it last weekend on Broadway. I’d heard various responses to Al Pac…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 10:33AMMonday, February 7, 2011
This production, by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, of one of Ibsen’s last plays, is beautiful from top to bottom, but the set and the performances far outweigh the text itself. The play is a p…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:37AMFriday, January 21, 2011
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Sarah Treem’s terrific new play, in a beautiful production directed by Emily Mann at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, is that it’s a two-hande…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:04PM 
